Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst 🥰🥰

San Francisco's techno boom is a warning to the world Chris Zaldua updates his prescient 2024 essay from No Tags Vol 1.

New (old) essay is online.

Is this a mixtape?

I live right by this guy and I see him on the street smoking a cigarette looking haggard as fuck and it’s so depressing

Really, really nice writing. Honest, true, and yours. Very good reading. Good work.

Any chance there’s a copy of this NME bit floating around? I’d love to read if so.

Saw your pics and wanted to link but figured it would be a brief trip - plz hit me up next time let’s 100% make this happen

I love the energy even though I don’t really agree with the assertion.

Tangentially, I’ve been watching Death Note and there is a cut on the soundtrack that is 100% AFX ‘SAW 2’ homage and there are also Coil and SPK references in the show and that just makes me love it all the more

Fantastic reading, loved everything about this.

Last night I was thinking about Motion the Dance and how it’s a generational track that basically changed my life

The paywall is now down in case you don’t subscribe to First Floor and you’d like to read it ⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️⬇️

Ah yes, the plot of my favorite Verhoeven movie

I end with this amazing quotation from
@glorbis.bsky.social

The Ambient Events Moment Is Real Moving past the trappings of the club and the dated template of the chillout room, a new wave of events is specifically centering vaporous sounds and focused listening.

I wrote an essay for Shawn Reynaldo’s First Floor newsletter about an emerging moment in electronic music events that is absolutely not club-centric.

Best record label of 2025 for me, easy.

Agree with everything said above and also I must add that in general, Bandcamp UX is unbelievably, shockingly bad. So, so frequently it seems the structure and design of the site is built to actively staunch its primary user base at every turn.

Real shit app.

The Fix Is In? DOJ Antitrust Turmoil Boosts Live Nation Bid to Escape Ticketmaster Monopoly Trial As new reporting suggests the Justice Department may be nearing a settlement that could spare Live Nation Entertainment a courtroom...

We are so utterly cooked.

‘… Live Nation’s behind-the-scenes push for a negotiated deal [reflects] a broader Trump-era pattern in which politically connected lobbyists … override … career antitrust staff — fueling the perception among critics that “the fix is in.”’

Lovely read. Super relatable. Lots of resonance.

Separately, going from ‘Tina Pizza’ —> ‘Sold’ was an extremely good decision.

Hi, very glad you enjoyed. Yes, please send to: chris@certainsound.net

Spot on. The absolute truth. This is why I have been saying for years that Substack is a total farce and not at all a solution for independent writers.

Boomer shit

Bay Area duo Phipps Pt. on iteration, collaboration, and psychedelic folk Lovage Sharrock and Jon Leidecker discuss Bay Area experimental music history, '70s French experimental folk music, and the challenge (and the joy) of developing a genuine collaborative process.

I published an interview with Bay Area psychedelic folk duo Phipps Pt., whose album “Songs We No Longer Sing” was one of the best things I heard in 2025.

See the Andreesen-Horowitz Manifesto in case you want to see this thinking literally and plainly laid bare.

This is really good. This is helping me elucidate my deep seated sense that Tech (cap T) is fascist, because at its core, what Tech (the edifice) believe is that All Technology is Good, and humanity is effectively subjugated to it and exists to service the advancement of Technology itself.

Three top shelf bangers. Gonna play at least one of these in the club this weekend, very stoked to hear it at full blast.

Oneohtrix Point Never Again Gonna Listen To That Shit

My kingdom (in the form of social media likes) for anyone who can ID everything from 2hr onto the end please

proangeejaygeewings

aka-Sol at Dripping 2025 spirit journey from Dripping resident aka-sol. Lakeside

I really can’t believe how good this mix is. Slo-mo house, natty rankin digidub, drumless techno, airy jungle, half-time, trip-hop, 90s IDM cuts I’ve never heard.

Honestly reminds me of Coldcut ‘Journeys by DJ,’ same zone.

I think it’s all vinyl if you care about that.